Carried on A Farplane Winde
by Meilan Firaga
Summary: Four years after Sin, Rikku is terrified to learn that Gippal has been talking to her father and apparently dragging his friends through every jewelry store in Spira. She goes to the Farplane in Guadosalam as she often does when things get tough or she's just plain lonely, and looks for the shade of her favorite past companion. What will she do when he do when he doesn't appear?
1. Prologue: Hit With Gale Force

__Seriously, I would just about kill to own Final Fantasy X and X-2. Sadly, I do not, so I write fanfiction instead. This story is about four years in the making. I've had parts of it written for ages and am just now getting around to posting anything because I finally feel like it's going to get to a completion point I can be proud of. I hope you enjoy it! Also, I live and thrive on reviews. :p

**_Carried on a Farplane Winde_**

**_Prologue: Hit with Gale Force_**

I brushed a beaded braid away from my face and took a deep breath, steeling myself to move forward and through the gate before me. Tysh, was this always going to be so hard to do? This place still made me uncomfortable, no matter how many times I'd gone from where I stood now to the other side of the enormous gate. And I had been here a lot since that day four years ago. Fear and uncertainty brought me this time, though other things had influenced my various visits. At times, it was a bit of everything: happiness, boredom…despair. At one point it had even been hope, though the hope I'd had that day was long gone now. Zip! Off into the wild blue! I shoved my hand into my hair, wincing when my fingers caught in the top of one of my braids, pulling hard on my scalp, and took another deep breath. I walked through the stupid gate.

The Farplane. It really did have a scent to it, even if I hadn't realized it until well after that psycho Seymour mentioned the fact in his home so long ago. Actually, I hadn't even noticed it until I'd been coming here for about a month. I'd started just a week on the tail of Sin's defeat. That scent—it was comforting now. It had been the soft musk that rested just beneath his scent, the one I'd sought the night after the battle when I'd crept into his empty room on the airship and cried myself to sleep with my face buried in his pillow. I'd cut up the fabric on that pillow, weaving it into a patchwork of fabrics that I'd used to make my own quilt for the Celsius. One scrap I'd sewn onto the inside of the scarf I wore now, a fact that even Yunie didn't know.

Jeez, when did I get this morbid? Stupid question. I had come to the Farplane today because I didn't know what to do. That had happened before, though my troubles then…well, they hadn't been Gippal. We weren't exactly together and never had been, but there had been times, like shortly after Yunie beat the hell out of Sin, that he'd been sort of a comfort to me. Hell, in that first month, I'd needed him more than I could ever really explain, even if all I got from him was someone to curl up to and pretend when the emptiness threatened to swallow me whole. But Gippal…

He didn't smell like warm earth after a heavy summer rain and the faint doughy scent of sake. No, Gippal smelled like grease and static, as do most Al Bhed when they mess around with machina all the time. I smelled like that most of the time. His arms, well, they were strong, but not as strong as I wanted them to be, and his flamboyant Al Bhed clothes would never replace the heavy red coat I had spent two incredible nights wrapped up in on . It really didn't bother me that I'd been wrapped up in it alone. That comforting scent was there anyway.

So I'd come here to look at him again, talk to the image the pyreflies shot out in front of me and try to riddle out what to do about Gippal's oddly frequent visits to the Celsius or my little home in Kilika. Or maybe, to try and figure out what he'd been asking Pop that one day about three weeks ago when I'd seen him blushing and stammering before my old man while dad just stared. I was pretty sure I knew what he'd asked, because after that little conversation he'd been popping up wherever I was, trying his absolute hardest to smother me with as much attention as he could muster.

I was terrified. I mean, comfort is one thing, but love? The only love I've known was—to my knowledge—very unrequited. Admittedly, I might have let things get a little too far out of hand just after Vegnagun. I was depressed, see. Yunie had Tidus now, miraculously back from being dead or a dream, whichever it was, and Paine was heading off with her boys for another adventure tour 'round Spira the next day. They were happy and me? I was alone. Bad Rikku had way too much bad alcohol. Bad Rikku woke up next to Gippal. Clothes were on the floor. Bad situation escalated to very freaking bad.

Things hadn't been the same since. I guess we might kinda have been dating for a while now, but I really don't want to admit it. We're not exclusive, see (I don't pay attention to the fact that I don't actually have anyone else), but I get the feeling he wants to be. After all, what else would explain Paine's complaints over her CommSphere transmissions that he'd been making them stop at every available jewelry store?

Okay, enough going in circles about the poor state I was in. I walked the perimeter of the Farplane and came to stand facing out over the ledge. I closed my eyes and concentrated as hard as I could, first on his coat, and then on that ridiculous collar, and finally on the beautiful bronze eye that I'd only seen once. Tyshat cihkmyccac. I peeked one eye open as I did every time, a sort of tribute to the day we'd met. Then both my eyes shot open in alarm, my eyebrows rising to meet my hairline.

Nothing.

I shook my head frantically, jammed my eyes shut, and brought up my best memories of Keyakku. When I opened them again, there he was, goggles in place and everything. I closed my eyes again, starting to get irritated, and focused once more on the Legendary-Idiot-That-Got-Himself-Fried-By-Yunalesca, but when I opened them there was still nothing. The pyreflies wouldn't even show a faint fading glimpse. I searched through my memories, throwing out every person I'd ever known. They all appeared for me almost the instant I'd so much as thought their name. All but one.

Auron was no longer on the Farplane.

I think I screamed then, falling to my knees. Brother's voice started shouting over the radio and I had no choice but to answer.

"Ed'c yh asankahlo! Caht y saccyka du Yunie yht saad sa uidceta Guadosalam!" I shouted, coming to my feet only to turn and bolt out of the Farplane. If he wasn't on the Farplane, where was he?

The Al Bhed sentences are as follows:

1. Tyshat cihkmyccac.—Damned sunglasses.

2. Ed'c yh asankahlo! Caht y saccyka du Yunie yht saad sa uidceta Guadosalam!—It's an emergency! Send a message to Yunie and meet me outside Guadosalam!


	2. Chapter 1

**_Chapter 1_**

My head was pounding. I didn't know if it was out of exhaustion or worry or maybe even the bottle of whiskey I'd swiped from Buddy's room the night before, but I knew it hurt and it hurt bad. Actually, more than just hurt it felt like somebody had crammed Vegnagun inside my skull and he'd decided my brain was threatening. So…yeah. It hurt.

But I dragged myself out of bed anyway. I couldn't just lay around, not now. It took a moment for my head to clear enough to pull on my boots when I first sat up, but after that I made short work of tugging on the shoes, wrapping my scarf around my neck, and brushing and braiding my hair as I did every morning. I sighed and got a taste of my own morning breath. Definitely the whiskey's fault. I like to tell myself that I'm not an alcoholic. Really, everyone gets worn out every once in a while, and it's not my fault that I'm a lonely Al Bhed thief turned sphere hunter who's still pining for a legendary guardian four years dead.

Shut up.

Since it probably wouldn't have been prudent to try the jump from the platform my bed—and the two that used to belong to Yunie and Paine—rested on I braved the stairs, doing my best not to be annoyed that such a trip took far longer than the simple leap to the floor. I jammed the heel of my hand in one of my eyes, rubbing furiously to try and make myself more aware. It didn't work, which was obvious when I tripped on the next to last stair and performed a spectacular face plant into the hardwood. I groaned and laid the side of my face against the wood, really not wanting to get up.

"Ish Mish Rikkuu okay?" Ah, yes, Barkeep. Always trying to be helpful. Freaking annoying when you're hungover.

"No," I moaned, "Mish Rikku is not okay." I sighed again, knowing my next question would not end in favorable results when news of my condition reached Brother, busybody that he is. "Barkeep, do you have anything I could take to help a hangover?" Instead of an answer I was blessed with the obnoxiously loud sound of softly clinking glasses and then the shuffle of Hypello feet as he came around the bar and brought me a small bottle of heaven. "Have I ever told you you're a life saver, Barkeep?" I sat up just enough to drink the vial down, gasping at the near instant relief.

Finally I was able to happily get to my feet. I returned the empty bottle to Barkeep along with a dazzling smile and a very bouncy 'thanks' then skipped out of the cabin and down to the lift. I was a little late for our meeting on the bridge. When I got there, Yunie and Tidus were already waiting, and Brother, of course, was complaining about me and my nonexistent punctuality to anyone that would listen and everyone that wouldn't. Basically, he was just complaining to hear himself talk.

"Shut up," I griped. "No one's listening to you anyway." He made to protest, but Yunie jumped in first, and, as always, Yunie speaks, Brother listens like a Yevonite to Maester Mika before the Eternal Calm. Ah, I love that simile.

"We thought we'd split up so we can cover three places at once." See, even if she swears she has no leadership capabilities, Yunie knows exactly how to manage this kind of stuff. "We should be able to get through most of Spira pretty quickly that way, even if it will still take us a while." She paused for a moment and my stomach clenched as I watched the signs in her face. "Rikku, are you absolutely sure?" I knew that was coming. Crazy little Rikku must be making up stories off the top of her head.

"Just so you guys will finally really believe me and I know I can trust you to really search, let's go to Guadosalam and the Farplane first." Yunie opened her mouth and I knew what was coming this time too. "I know you don't believe me. It's farfetched. Duh." I hated that they didn't trust me. Wasn't she, oh I don't know, HOLDING HANDS with a guy we had thought dead not two years ago? I mean, it just seems so hypocritical that she won't believe me because Auron actually was real where Tidus was nothing more than a dream. I would think he'd be more likely to return from the dead considering that he'd REALLY EXISTED.

"The Farplane it is." Oh, Buddy, if only you knew how many times you'd jumped in just in time to stop a half-hysterical Rikku Rant from taking place.

My head was pounding. The steady throb was obscuring my eyesight, which I knew was bad anyway. Why was this happening to me? One minute everything had been peace, but now all I could feel was the blinding pain and the burning heat as I stumbled through some sort of grit and drudge that piled up to my knees. I didn't—couldn't—understand. Was this hell? Did it exist? If so, what had I done to be brought here? I had helped end a horrid falsity that preyed on the suffering of an entire world.

Could Yu Yevon have really been an odd sort of god? Was this his punishment and revenge?

I continued forward as well as I could though I had no inclination as to where I was or where I was going. Somewhere some driving need simply told me to go, like it was a matter of life or death. Hmph. Such things weren't really of any consequence to me at all anymore. But then, why could I feel such pain? The light that reached my lone ocular was both bright and dark at the same time for while I knew it was bright, it had become so blinding that I could make out nothing of my surroundings, not even the substance I traveled through. My one bare hand felt scraped raw, the nerves on fire without really feeling anything.

I tripped and fell to my knees, catching myself from falling forward on my bare hand. A tortured cry wrenched forth from my throat as the feeling of a thousand blades shot up that arm on contact. My legs throbbed with sensation, prickling as though I knelt upon a bed of needles, and still the need to move on was there, yanking me back to my aching feet and forcing me forward once more.

Hell.

* * *

I sat on the steps just outside the gate, waiting. Tidus and Yunie had been inside for nearly a quarter of an hour now. I could only imagine what methods of drawing him out of the pyreflies they had been attempting there. I swung my feet back and forth, remembering with slightly less clarity than I should the time I had sat on these very steps with the man I sought. It was nothing special. We didn't even talk really, no more than a few words that amounted to me asking why he didn't go in and him harrumphing like I asked a billion questions.

Finally Tidus stomped down the steps toward me, Yunie following with a look of amazed bewilderment on her face. I told them, but would they listen? No. Can't listen to Rikku; she's young and impulsive and doesn't really think things through. Two years younger. Big deal.

Yunie nodded and I realized she was trying to give an apology. Tysh ed. And I was doing so well with my semi-false anger too. Instead of griping as I had truly wanted to do only a moment before I gave my cousin a half smile and a bit of a nod. I know she means well (she always does) and that she was just trying to make sure I wasn't getting my hopes up for nothing.

"So," I chirped, hoping I could at least sort of fool them with false enthusiasm. "I'll take the woods surrounding the Kilika temple. You two can split up between Luca and Besaid." I smiled as bright a smile as I could manage and hopped up from my place on the edge of the steps. "Let's go!"

I scampered off before they got a chance to comment and my emotions could truly grasp hold. I was scared, more scared than should truly have been possible when you've finally grasped some semblance of hope, but I didn't know if I could really hold on to that hope since any hope I had over the past few years had been so easily dashed by nothing but circumstance alone. It seemed almost wrong to hope, like I was oh-so-happily jumping at the chance to keep on beating that same dead chocobo. And I like chocobos, so beating a chocobo—even a dead one—was a little depressing.

Damn it. There goes the morbid-ness again. Off to Kilika!

It was a very long and quiet trip on the Celsius to our various locations. Mostly I sat outside on the deck and stared off across the clouds. I'd done this on Pop's airship years ago, sitting there and getting really freaking cold. Auron had dragged me inside then—and scolded me for "endangering myself" on Yunie's pilgrimage (honestly, can't a man just admit it when he's worried about you?)—but no one was going to do that now. They knew I wanted to be alone.

Yunie was going to hop off at Besaid so I went down to say goodbye when I spotted the island in the distance. I really didn't think I actually needed to express a goodbye since we'd be seeing each other again when Buddy and Brother made rounds to pick us up in two days, but I did it anyway. It was all about appearances and making sure they thought I was just as happy as I had ever been. Two days was the official time we'd decided on: two days in each location, being sure to search every inch of the area.

Much to my surprise, Yunie met me when the elevator opened on the deck to take me down. She grabbed my arm without a word and pulled me inside, a wide smile breaking out across her features. I watched her bounce up and down on the balls of her feet as we took the lift down to the engine room. Why she wanted to go to the engine room was completely beyond me, but I let her tug me along and pull me down the two flights of stairs to the lowest level. This is where the individual bunkrooms were located. There were about eight rooms in total down here, four of which were inhabited by Brother, Buddy, Shinra, and Barkeep. They'd been using the same rooms for so long that they'd all had their names taped to the doors. Yuna tugged me past their rooms, the ones closest to the engine room staircase, and into the next room on the right, whose door had no label.

My stomach lurched. Why did Yunie and Tidus have to choose the room where—well, the one where Gippal had stayed right after Vegnagun? I'm not explaining any more. I did that already so neh. Anyway, just being in the room again was uncomfortable. It really didn't help that I was sure I saw a pair of Tidus' boxer shorts peaking out from underneath the bed. At least I'd kept them from staying up in the cabin with me and no walls to blank out the noise.

Ew.

Yeah, so why did Yunie bring me down here? She was shuffling through the drawers that were built into the steel wall. We'd had to install latches across the top of them shortly after we got the Celsius up in the air. Turns out that drawers don't take too kindly to the way Brother flies in tilting loop-de-loops on occasion. And Yunie's got a sphere. Great.

"Tidus and I found this while we were hunting around Besaid. It's not much, but there are a few scenes of Kilika that may help you out." Her smile was way too bright when she stuffed the sphere in my hands and ran out the door. Why did they keep doing this stuff to poor little me? Annoyed, I flopped down on the bed, hoping beyond hope that there wasn't any grossness on those blankets, and switched on the sphere.

It was Auron. He was on the dock at Kilika and was very obviously unaware of being filmed. The shot was taken from behind him as he faced out across the ocean and into the setting sun on the horizon.

Off button, off button, OFF BUTTON! Why the HELL would I want to see that? Damn it, there were tears coursing across my cheeks. I scrubbed at them violently, making my cheeks raw in the process. This really sucked. It was bad enough trying to hold on to this blatantly nonexistent hope, but to be reminded of exactly what I was hoping for right as Yunie was jumping ship on the first leg of the search.

Damn it.

Okay, so I'll hand it to her that she was trying to give me a little extra hope to tack on there and that her intentions were nothing but good, but you know, the road to hell is paved in good intentions.

If there is a hell.

Is there? If there's a hell, is it separate from the Farplane? I mean, is it some crazy otherworld where pyreflies gather and are filled with the eternal sensation of their tiny light scattering wings being slowly ripped from their not-really-there bodies made entirely of light balls?

Reading way too much into that, Rikku. WAY too much.

I jammed the sphere in one of my belt pouches. There was no need to be worried about it just yet. That is, if I was ever going to worry about it at all. Really wasn't planning on it, to tell the truth. After all, worrying about it would fall into the obviously not good side of the scale. I don't like that side of the scale; spent a lot of time on it that I didn't really need to and didn't want to spend more. I hopped up from the bed and made my way out the door, making for the cabin. I didn't feel so obligated to say bye to Yunie now that she'd made her decision to 'help' me. Actually, I didn't feel obligated to do much of anything. I kinda wanted to go back to sleep, but it was barely three in the afternoon yet, and I knew I just needed a distraction.

Well, we did have a chocobo in the cabin. A chocobo Shinra happened to capture with his CommSphere in the Thunder Plains. I bet I could get it to stampede the bar if I tried hard enough…

Hmm. Mischievous distraction. Heh heh.

* * *

My vision was starting to clear. I could make out the swirling, blistering sands on the wind before they were swept beneath my aching eyelids and blinded me once more in a howling pain that rushed through my body like a river in its bed. I didn't think I was in hell any longer, but the alternative was just as terrifying. My brief glimpse of this world was familiar in a way I hadn't thought possible. It reminded me of the heavy sandstorms of BikanelDesert, right down to the flecks of grit that whipped across my body, stinging already spent nerves into releasing evermore pain into my system.

But Bikanel…well, I couldn't be there. It wasn't possible. Bikanel was a place on the otherworld, Spira. A place I had visited before, but that I knew I couldn't see again. I began to stumble as I struggled to gain the top of what I assumed to be the next dune. If I could only find the nearest of those many Al Bhed shelters I remembered I would have not only proof of my location—which would likely stun me more—but a place to take shelter from the horrific sandstorm raging around me. Actually, I couldn't be sure that any of the shelters stood anymore. With the incredible range the missile blast upon the Al Bhed home had unleashed I had no idea if any of the shelters remained as more than the tiniest flecks of metal amidst the oceans of sand.

I must have reached the top of the sand dune because suddenly there was no more up to climb. I tripped over my own feet as I tried to continue my upward momentum with nowhere to go and landed on the sand in my face. Just like when I had landed on my knee before I felt as though my skin had connected with a bed of needles as it was scraped along the sand on my skid to the bottom of the dune. I cried out as the new wave of pain swept through me, tearing at my worn and tired brain. As I lay at the bottom I slowly came to realize that though still painful the wind was far less harsh here. I raised my head slowly, the only way I truly could at the moment, and lifted a hand to shield my eye. Cracking it open, I found that I was lying between two dunes, an almost natural shelter.

Shelter. Temporary safety. I pushed at the sand and my own body, ignoring the pain until I had rolled my body onto its stomach. With a last burst of energy I tugged my heavy coat over my head, covering my exposed skin.

I was safe. No matter how short a time, for now I was safe.


	3. Chapter 2

**A/N: **A HUGE thank you to those of you that have reviewed! I wasn't sure when I began posting this whether or not there was still a following for the Final Fantasy X fandom, and I'm happy to see that one does exist. :) If any of you would be interested, I'm participating in a nifty little fic-gifting event this year over on LiveJournal that requires me to fulfill 12 fic requests by prompters. Final Fantasy X/X-2 is on the list of fandoms I'll be writing for, so if you want to give me a challenge just drop a comment on my LJ under the username demented_mei!

**_Chapter 2_**

I had Buddy drop me off at the Port so I could drop by my home before heading up into the woods surrounding the temple. As usual, I didn't wait for them to reach the dock, flying low to skim the ocean's surface, before I jumped from the deck to the waiting waters below. One of the best things about living on the ocean was swimming in it, and I was sure to do that every chance I got. Hey, living in a desert all your life can instill such a love of water in a girl. Besides, if I swam I could just make my way around the outer edges of the town and climb up out of the water on the deck around my house. Pretty nifty and convenient!

After having settled in here at the Port a year and a half ago I could swim around the edges of town to my house in record time, so it wasn't long before I was tugging myself up onto the back of the curving deck around my house. I loved that about Kilika. All of the homes here were so adorable and tropical, and living this close to the sea breeze was an incredible experience. I made my way around the deck, ducking low between my porch swing and the wall of the house, and headed inside. My house had been built after Vegnagun—at my own request, really—and was tucked away behind several other homes and apartments. It was amazing how much gil I'd managed to make sphere hunting. I'd built not the typical little home with another person living above or below me, but a two-story place instead. I was proud of it, and happy to call such a little place home.

Of course, being a thief myself, I never trusted people enough to not add on some extra security measures. After all, fabric doors may look cool, but they won't stop an intruder. So, aside from the fabric, I had a machina security system. It was a series of pipes, levers, and buttons that surrounded the doorframe of both my entrance door and the door upstairs that led to my second deck-slash-patio as well as all of my three windows. My doors didn't look any different if you weren't paying attention, but if someone came in that didn't clear my scan check the security system would block every exit and keep an intruder inside until I could get here to take care of the issue.

Wow, I am way off topic. I was dropping by to make sure I had my garment grids and to get rid of that damned sphere Yunie had thrown at me on the Celsius. A quick and easy thing to do, really. I took my curving stairs two at a time, ducking quickly through the beaded curtain that served as my bedroom door. I loved beads. Over by my big, built-in-the-wall bed was a waist high dresser that I'd covered in framed pictures. I kept my garment grids and dresspheres in the top left drawer.

From the very beginning Shinra had always made copies of every dressphere we picked up so that Yunie, Paine, and I could all have all of the spheres for our grids. It was probably a precaution we didn't really need to take since all of us had our own preferences as to which spheres we used more. The garment grids had been fun to split up. After we'd decided to go our separate ways, we tallied up how many of the things we'd collected. There were sixty total, which meant thirty each. We'd spent a good three hours at the table in the cabin with a huge pile of the grids in front of us. There were only a couple of disputes over a grid, and those were quickly settled with a game of rock, paper, scissors.

Personally, I was sure to never leave the house without the Samurai's Honor grid. It was sort of a tribute, really. With this mission, though, I wanted to have a nice collection to use when I needed them, and I certainly wasn't about to run off into Kilika Woods alone without the Chaos Maelstrom equipped. Yeah, like I actually wanted to be a dead Rikku. Kilika fiends may not be a HUGE deal, but that didn't mean they weren't just HUGE OUTRIGHT!

So, I scooped up a handful of the better grids and flopped over on my bed to switch out my dresspheres. Both the Samurai's Honor grid and the Chaos Maelstrom grid held six dresspheres, so I didn't have to do anything more than move them from one grid to the other. My six spheres were an odd combination. Of course I used the Thief sphere. It was made for me—BY me, actually—after all. I also tacked in the Alchemist sphere, another of my prodigies. After that things got a little odd. I used the Black Mage sphere, though I wasn't particularly good at it, and the Gun Mage sphere, which I was actually REALLY good at. Then came my heavy hitters. Much to everyone's surprise, I was the one of us Gullwings that mastered the Dark Knight and Samurai spheres. Yeah, me. Little Rikku. Can you guess why?

The Samurai is pretty obvious. I bet next to know one knows that it's actually Auron's sphere that we found on Yunie's pilgrimage. The Dark Knight—one of the oddest among dresspheres for the way it was activated—I use because I understand it. It's all about death and I think with all the people I've seen dead and dying that I know a bit about death.

Crap. Morbid again. The big plus of using the Dark Knight sphere was that I was pretty much everything-that-could-kill-me-proof. I liked that. Anyway, I grabbed my spheres and grids, snapped the drawer shut, and wrenched open the right hand drawer. It looked like a typical junk drawer, but all of the junk here consisted of the various accessories I'd collected. Some of them made it a literal junk drawer they were so useless, but I kept them all anyway. My favorite of all accessories was this nifty little thing called the Ochre Ring. It absorbs lightning and turns it into health like way too many ridiculous fiends do naturally. Take that astraphobia! I shoved that thing on my left hand like it was a god come to save me. Then, since I was in Kilika, I grabbed the Crimson Ring and crammed it on my right hand. I'm not a big fan of all the flashy fire stuff—for some reason getting over my fear of lightning made me love the stuff—but some of the Kilika fiends could do some nasty fire damage if you weren't paying attention. Plus, the ability to cast up Firaga was frickin' awesome when an Ochu popped its ugly head up.

With that done and the stupid sphere shoved in another drawer, I decided it was time to go. I reached under my bed just long enough to yank out my old pilgrimage-worn bedroll. I could forage for food. This island was literally covered in big, juicy fruit. See, to make sure I covered all of the woods I was going to beat my way around half of it today, camp out tonight, and beat through the rest up to the temple tomorrow instead of coming back to rest at my house. It was more efficient that way, and besides, I'd kinda missed camping.

Kilika Woods, here I come!

* * *

Gah, I was so fricking tired. I was at my camp site, in case you couldn't guess. The sun had set, like four hours ago. I hadn't filled my search quota by then so I went on using a portable lamp and some flash bombs until I was satisfied, which means I probably kept on considerably longer than Yunie or Tidus would have done. Vaguely I wondered if they'd had any luck in their searches, but then my muscles hurt so much that I couldn't really care.

The fiend population was freaking ridiculous. I'd never had to fight so many alone, so I really wasn't prepared to spend the whole day in the Dark Knight dressphere. Which is exactly what I had to do. Ugh, so tired. I was ready to sleep—I even had my bedroll spread out—but there was no way I was going to take off my best offensive and defensive weapon when there was a chance I'd get snuck up on. Even the machina perimeter guards I'd set up were no guarantee and alone it's kinda hard to set a watch considering, hey, I'm the only one there. So, fully armored, I laid down on my bedroll, flipped onto my stomach, and threw my hand to the hilt of the Masamune. No way was I going to wake up in the midst of being attacked without that thing in my hand and ready to slice n' dice whatever was playing alarm clock.

I dreamed. Not that that's something horribly out of the ordinary, but this dream was interesting. I dreamed that I was warm and loved, wrapped up in a strong pair of arms. Auron, of course, was the owner of said arms. We were kissing and he kept looking at me with an expression I could only describe as adoration—dreaming, remember. Dream Auron could be completely blitzed in love with me. He pulled back from the kiss, smoothing my hair away from my face, which was a bit sweaty, and whispered my name. It sounded like a sweet, precious prayer and for a second I knew just how Yevonites could have invested time and love into the prayers they sent to their false god.

Did I mention there was some major naked-ness? 'Cause there was. No clothes in sight for either of us.

Then, of course, what was a great dream went and got all weird. Next thing I knew, I was outside my body watching some tragic love story unfold. For some terrible reason that I couldn't fathom Auron was a summoner. It wasn't Sin he was fighting, but it was something bad and evil and part of me could just feel that without really knowing what he was up against. I watched as the two of us embraced in what looked to be a cave made of crystal. There were tears coursing done my face and his eyes were red.

"It's the only way," I kept saying to him.

And then, there was that dreamy scene change flash, and Auron was praying to a fayth, its statue placed deep in the crystal cave. Tears were falling from his cheeks as he prayed, and then I realized that he wasn't praying. He was grieving. Beneath the body of the fayth was a small woman with enormous yellow wings that almost matched the color of her hair: the aeon. The fayth…

The fayth was me.

I woke up crying. Bawling, more like. I wasn't sure why. It was getting near dawn, as I could see the sky lightening in the east, and not a single fiend had attacked me. I dragged myself from the bedroll and made quick work of tearing down camp. It was so much easier with one person instead of seven.

Another day of searching had begun.

* * *

I woke with a start lying face down in the sand. My head pounded, the sound of the howling sandstorm outside the safety of my coat doing nothing to lessen the excruciating pain. Everywhere twinges of pain were flooding me as my body was wracked by the swirling sands. For a long moment, the aching distracted me from the reason I had awoken.

I had dreamed. A very strange dream, at that. It wasn't a dream in the sense of a moving picture behind sleeping eyes. I felt things, emotions that had to be associated with events that were not being played out for me. First, a euphoria unlike any I have ever experienced, love and light and laughter, happiness incarnate spreading throughout my body until everything tingled with a constant strum of contentment. Then, slowly, a dawning realization that brought sorrow and pain, the same kind I had felt when I realized that Jecht and Braska were going to die for a false hope. Finally there was grief. Grief that could barely be contained within the name given to it and that consumed everything inside of me. All the while I could hear my own voice whisper the same prayer over and over, but I could not make out the one word I uttered.

The sand beneath my face was wet, as though it had absorbed a flood of tears. For all I knew, it had. There were no tears now, but my throat felt raw from whispers and grief. The air was thick with it beneath my coat, but I knew better than to remove it and face the howling storm. I would wait it out, both the now-fading grief of a vanishing dream and the storm that raged on around me.

* * *

I sat beside the CommSphere on the wall outside the steps that descended down to the temple atrium. The Celsius was supposed to pick me up here an hour or so before sunset. Time was getting close, but though I stared at the horizon I wasn't really looking for them.

I hadn't found him. Kilika Woods was as empty of Auron's presence as it had been for four years now, and I had searched every nook and cranny. I had had such hope for this search, such hope to find him, and even if I really knew that I couldn't expect him to turn up in the first place I looked, I still didn't KNOW that, and this was a big disappointment. I almost wanted to be angry with him, angry that he wasn't there when I called. I started to realize that this was how Yunie had felt our entire journey two years ago.

"Well, if isn't Cid's girl!"

Okay, Fate? Seriously. So not what I needed right now.

"I have a name, Gippal," I growled, exasperated. "Call me Rikku. I don't have to be tied to Pop my whole life, you know." I turned my head to the side to find him looking up at me from the sphere with one eyebrow raised. Why is it that all males can do that but I can't? The Moonflow glittered in the sunlight behind him.

"Someone's in a bad mood today. What's up?"

"Nothing I can talk to you about."

"Aw, come on, Rikku, you can talk to me about anything." Well, whaddya know. He can say my name without alcohol or orgasms involved. Huh. Wasn't sure I'd expected that.

"Right, anything." The list had already started scribbling itself down in my head. "Except, of course, Tidus and Yunie's relationship, Brother's annoyance with you, speculations as to why Nooj bothered with Leblanc, Spira before Sin's defeat, female monthly body cycles…feel free to stop me any time, you know, because your list of forbidden subjects is pretty damn long."

"Okay, so I guess I might deserve that." At least he had the sense to look a little bit sheepish. A black gloved hand appeared behind his head, two of the fingers raised and spread to give him bunny ears. Heh heh. I love it when Paine does that stuff. It's the only good part about him bugging me so much over the spheres. I smirked. "Hey, there's a smile!" Ah, how I hate that he always thinks it's his doing.

"She's smiling at me, dumbass," Paine said as she shoved her hand forward, knocking him across the back of the head. She bent down over his shoulder so I could see something besides her leggings and short shorts. Her other hand was still stretched out behind her. I, of course, liked to think that this was because she had only just let go of Nooj's hand. Hee. Matchmaker Rikku. "Everything alright, Rikku?" Her brow furrowed. "Why are you up at the temple instead of at your house?"

Oh crap. I hadn't thought about explanations to them yet. Wonder if Gippal knows he has possibly-still-dead competition? "Long story," I answered. Briefly, I thought about making up some wild story where I was searching for the one-night stand from beyond the grave (ignoring that there had been no one-night stand, of course), but I decided to just give them a vague truth that only Paine was likely to get. I focused on her, making sure I had her eyes. Paine and I had discussed this briefly in Guadosalam and again at Macalania before Vegnagun. "Do you remember that guy I told you about in Macalania?" Her eyes widened, but she nodded.

"Guy?" Wow, Gippal looked scared and angry all at once. And here I'd thought complex emotions outside the boundaries of flirting were beyond him. "What frickin' guy?" Paine smacked the back of his head, her brow furrowing again as she turned back to me.

"Yes, what about him?"

"He's not where you and I saw him last." You know, I'd never seen her eyebrows go that high before. "He won't show up for me, Tidus, or Yunie, so we're sure he's not there." I watched her mouth work silently for a bit.

"That's impossible," she finally whispered. Gippal was still muttering 'what guy' questions, but Baralai had come up behind him and clapped a hand over his mouth so that everything was muffled.

"Yeah, cacti with fiend-fighting beams of light were impossible too." I thought for a second. "Actually, a lot of the stuff that's happened since Yunie started her pilgrimage was impossible. Anyway, I'm on the hunt now. Yunie's checking over Besaid and Tidus is currently in Luca. We're shifting locations today."

Gippal made to ask me 'what guy' again and Paine actually shoved him backwards and out of sight of the camera. "Where's your next location?" she asked, and I realized that she was going to do her best to keep Gippal the hell away from me. Oh gratefulness I had never before known you as I did then.

"I'll be at Mushroom Rock. Yunie and Tidus are going to take Mi'ihen and Djose." Paine nodded, and we both looked up (her using the sphere's controls, duh) at the sound of whirring engines. The Celsius was roaring closer, its bright paint glistening in the sun. "Well, I think that means I'm off." Paine nodded again and mouthed a silent 'good luck.' Just before the sphere shut off I caught a glimpse of Gippal rushing it, trying to ask me about my quest once again.

Nooj tripped him with his cane. Hah.

When the airship got close enough to the enormous set of stairs leading up the hillside I caught sight of Tidus on the deck. He tossed a rope over its edge for me and together we managed to get my little butt back on board. Brother had started maneuvering the ship once again before we were even halfway across the deck, but it didn't really cause much problem. Both of us had fought in far worse conditions, after all.

Tidus told me he'd had no luck in Luca. I shouldn't have been surprised, really. Auron had always hated Luca. However, my hope was already on a thin thread from my own failure, and adding Tidus' to it just made everything worse. I guess I'd been telling myself to hold out for irony and he'd be in the place on Spira he liked least. I really should stop telling myself things. I only get my hopes up.

* * *

Besaid was a HUGE surprise. Instead of just Yunie meeting us at the docks, we found ourselves facing Wakka, Lulu, Vidina, and the entire Aurochs team as well. I felt tears prick the back of my eyes when they told me that all of them had volunteered to help Yuna search the island at the barest mention of Auron's name. Everyone gave well wishes for our search and a huge stack of letters to Auron was thrust into my hands. But the best part, above anything that had happened so far, was what Wakka said to me as soon as I turned to go back into the Celsius behind Yunie and Tidus.

"'Ey, Rikku!" I turned to find him, the last left behind of the group. "You be sure and tell Auron, when you find him, that I'm expecting him within the next month to come see my son, ya?" I could only nod mutely at him with a big smile, tears filling my eyes.

Not 'if you find him.' When.


End file.
